This invention relates to a method and apparatus for processing poultry, especially eviscerated birds, so as to remove the winds, breasts and/or legs from the birds' bodies.
Machines are presently available for removing the wings/breast parts and thigh/drumstick parts from eviscerated birds. It is known in the poultry processing industry to cut a bird transversely to divide it into halves, one half thereafter being processed on a wing/breast line and the other half being processed on a leg line where the thigh/drumstick part is removed.
One object of the present invention is to simplify the method and apparatus so that the halving step is omitted and labor costs are reduced by eliminating the manual transfer operations between machines and processing lines.
In the industry, mechanized processing machines are generally either of the continuous motion type, but there have been a few machines of the intermittent motion type. In a continuous motion machine, the birds or their parts are moved at a constant velocity whereas, on intermittent motion machines, the birds or their components move in a step-by-step fashion. Some operations, particularly those where the location of a cut must be precise, are best performed when a bird is stationary. Other operations such as those in which meat is pulled from the body are more effectively performed during continuous movement.
An object of the present invention is to provide a machine which provides both intermittent movement and continuous movement, so that processing steps can be performed where the most suitable type of movement is occurring.
The removal of the thigh of a bird which still has its breast and wings attached raises certain problems when the birds are moving along a fixed path through the machine, inasmuch as provisions must be made so that tools along the bird's path will operate on the thighs but not on the wings or breasts. Objects of the present invention are to divert the thighs so that they follow a different path from the wings, and to use a tendon cutting blade that is normally spaced outside the path of the wings and breast and then is moved to a cutting position which cuts the thigh joint tendons.
It is known in the industry to place eviscerated birds on movable mandrels for manual or machine processing, but the configuration and mounting of prior mandrels has imposed certain limitations. A known type of machine has a mandrel which is upright for loading purposes and is then pivoted down so that the bird is in a reclining orientation as it is processed by the machine. However, only one reclining position is available, and no processing operations are performed on the bird when the mandrel is upright. According to the present invention, however, the mandrel is capable of moving through paths and at orientations which heretofore were not possible in poultry processing apparatus. These paths and orientations are available so that operations can be performed while the birds are at a most appropriate orientation and are travelling in the most suitable direction. Additionally, the configuration of the mandrel is novel and superior to existing mandrels.
The invention has many other objectives. By way of example, one object of the invention is to provide a rectangular path of movement of a bird being processed, such a path being known in other environments but not in association with poultry processing apparatus. Another object is to provide an apparatus which will precisely position birds so that they are always at a suitable position and orientation when operations are performed thereon.